- Record the music. See To record a performance, above.
- Choose Edit > Select All.
The display area is highlighted. You’re about to tap
along with your music as it plays back, providing Finale with a tempo
point of reference. These taps are called Time Tags.
- Choose a rhythmic value for your taps from
Time Tag > First Tag. If you plan to tap
even rhythmic values (all quarter notes, for example), also choose Time Tag > Record
Equal Durations. (If you don’t select Record Equal
Durations, you can actually vary the rhythmic value of your tap—sometimes
eighths, sometimes quarters—and Finale will attempt, by interpolating
and extrapolating, to assign the Time Tags correctly.)
- Under the word Keyboard, click the Play option.
There are two distinct layers of MIDI information in the Transcription
Mode: the Keyboard layer, which records every aspect of your synthesizer
performance, and the Time Tag layer, which records only your beat taps.
You want the Keyboard layer to play while you record the Time Tags.
- Under the words Time Tag, click Record.
If you’re about to generate Time Tag taps on any channel other than MIDI
channel 1, choose Click Input from the Time Tag menu. Click Listen to
MIDI, and play the note (or MIDI controller) you’ll be tapping. Click
OK.
- Click the Wait Till button. Finale goes
into pause mode, where it will remain until you touch a key or pedal on
the synthesizer.
- Tap any key in time to the music. Click
anywhere (except on a button) to stop recording. If you need to start
over, choose Edit > Select All and repeat the last four steps.
When the music ends, Finale automatically stops recording, and you should
see small note symbols (Time Tags) across the top of the screen.
- Choose Time Tag > Align Tags. This command “quantizes” your taps to the nearest notes.
A small dialog box appears, asking you to specify the search width. The
number in this text box, in thousandths of a second, tells Finale how
far from each tag it may “search” for a note with which to align it. If
the performance was slow, you can increase this number; if it was very
fast and “notey,” you may want to use a smaller number (so as not to move
a Time Tag inadvertently to the note after the one with which it should
align, for example). In most cases, however, you can simply keep the default
search width setting (200 thousandths of a second).
- Click OK (or press ENTER).
- Choose Time Tag > Assign Measure Tags. Finale automatically puts a tiny M at the beginning of every
measure, according to the time signature (or time signatures) you’ve already
established in the score itself. If your piece has several different time
signatures but you haven’t already established them in the score, choose
Time Tag > Measure and repeat the tapping process, but this
time tap at each downbeat. When you’re finished, choose Time Tag > Convert to Time
Signatures; this will automatically create time
signature changes in the correct measures in your score.
- If you’re transcribing onto two staves, choose
Transcription > Split Point > Fixed or Moving. If you choose Fixed, a dialog box appears. Enter a synthesizer
key number at which to split the performance into two staves. (Click Listen,
if you prefer, and play the key.) If you choose Moving, a dialog box appears
in which you can enter (or, by clicking Listen, play) the largest hand
span that occurs in your performance (in half steps). This doesn’t necessarily
mean the widest interval you can play with one hand; rather, it means
the widest interval you played in the piece. When transcribing, Finale
will attempt to split your two-handed performance onto the correct treble-
and bass-clef staves by tracking the positions of your hands as they move
up and down the keyboard. As long as there’s a discernible gap between
your two hands during the performance, Finale can track a changing split
point automatically.
- Click OK to exit either dialog box.
- Choose a smallest note value and type of quantization.
Choose the smallest predominant note value in the piece. Select either
Mixed Rhythms, Space Evenly (for a swing feel) or No Tuplets. See Quantization Settings dialog
box for more information.
- Click More Settings. The More Quantization
Settings dialog box appears.
- Select Include Voice Two if desired.
If there are few places where you’ll be needing an inner voice, however,
don’t select this option. This will prevent Finale from creating secondary
voices where you didn’t intend them—for example, where two successive
notes were accidentally overlapped in the sequence. The status of this
option can have a dramatic effect on the “cleanness” of your transcriptions.
Use MIDI/Audio > Retranscribe to correctly place Voice
1 and Voice Two in the few places you want them. See Retranscription.
- If you like, click Key Velocities, Note Durations.
- Click OK twice.
- If you like, click Save Continuous Data, and
Save Tempo Changes. When the dialog box appears (when you click
Save Tempo Changes), press ENTER. These options tell Finale to
remember the precise “feel” of your original performance, and to keep
this data handy for playback when you dismiss the dialog box. Save Key
Velocities tells Finale to retain key velocity information (see Key velocity).
Save Note Durations preserves Start and Stop Time data, such as rolled
chords and swing (see Start
and Stop Times); Save Continuous Data retains continuous data
(pedal, pitch bend, and so on); and Save Tempo Changes captures your tempo
fluctuations, including ritards and accelerandi. If you don’t choose these
options, then when you play back the transcribed music from the score,
Finale will simply play back the sheet music—mechanically reproducing
the notes, but without expression or feeling—instead of exactly re-creating
your original performance.
- Click the Transcribe button. If the
results aren’t perfect, remember that your performance is still intact,
in the Transcription window. Click the first measure of the transcribed
notation to switch back into the Transcription Mode, where you can correct
any split point or quantization settings; then click Transcribe again.
If you still don’t get good results and you can’t figure out what’s wrong,
read the section called Quantization Settings Guide in the Appendix. If
you discover occasional split point errors in the transcription (where
a right-hand note was notated on the left-hand staff, for example), you
can either change the split point settings in the Transcription window
and try again, or simply go to the score and fix the wrong notes manually.
See Recording
with HyperScribe, Quantization Settings dialog
box. See also Quantization
Guide, To correct split point errors and and Retranscription.
